Even Creatures of the Dark Long for the Dawn
by Alli4
Summary: Aya watches Ken after a blotched mission and reflects on his life and the role Ken plays in it.


I don't know why they look to me. I am the newest member of Weiss. I am not the oldest or most experienced and yet I have become the leader. I am the one who decides which missions are accepted and which are handed back. I alone give the orders that have ended countless lives. And yet I am not the smartest or the strongest. In fact I am probably the weakest member of the team but the others have all come to depend on me.  
  
I don't know why I allow them to rely on me. I know my own faults and I know that someday I will fail them and in this line of work failure means death. I suppose I am afraid that their last moments of life will bring the knowledge that it was my mistake that killed them. And so I do my best to prolong what I know is inevitable.  
  
It is funny in my mind that I should try to save and protect them. I am a killer. Murderer or hunter of the dark beasts it is all the same to me. It all ends in death and bloody hands. I once would have argued that what I have done and will do is justified and righteous, but now I know all too well that right or wrong blood is blood and death is death. So I promised to be honest with myself and truthfully I have come to terms with my existence. I live to kill. You cannot have life without death and I am death. It is my purpose and my mission.  
  
The others are like me and yet so different. They kill beside me but I cannot call them murderers even in my own cynical mind. Maybe that is why I try to protect them. Maybe that is why I am here now with him.  
  
He is sitting alone in the darkened room and he has not yet noticed my presence. I can see in the faint light from the window that he is crying silent tears. His shoulders shake with the sobs he will not voice and the hands that hold his weapon are no longer steady.  
  
I watched him tonight. I knew this mission would be hard for him and I tried to position him in a safe location so that he would not have to see. But I should have known that the stubborn boy would not listen to my warnings. He has seen what I had tried to blind him to, and in the end he had bloodied his hands just as I had.  
  
I watched him as he lowered the body of the girl to the ground. She was about seven and truly beautiful in that childish manner. It had not been meant to happen like this but the past, as I well know, is impossible to change. One moment we had been standing side by side in front of the target and as we leapt in for the kill the girl had leapt as well. It had been his claws that cut her young flesh. His tears that washed her face as she breathed her last. His hand that had closed the staring eyes.  
  
I watched and I waited. Waited for the storm to break and hoped that it would not break him. So here I stand, silently watching Ken Hidaka cry for the innocent life he has taken. He has become what he has never been before, a killer.  
  
I know how he feels, but I also know that I cannot comfort him. I am not even sure if I can help him. For me it was a simple fact that one day I could no longer deny. I was a killer before Weiss. I had shed blood before and not all of it was guilty. I never truly enjoy killing but that has never stopped me. I know that it bothers my teammates. I watch them when we return from a mission and I see that their eyes are still focused on the bloody face of our last target or still hearing his screams.  
  
I used to feel that way. Perhaps I might once have hid in a dark room and cried silent tears like Ken is doing now but no longer. I have lived too long. Seen too much. I know what humans are and I feel no more pity for them.  
  
But Ken and the others are not like me. Even though they see the same things I do and commit the same crimes they still feel pity and remorse. They are not killers. They are the true defenders that Persia speaks of in his long self-righteous speeches. Where I kill because it is my purpose they kill to protect what they have lost. Yohji kills to protect women because of the woman he was unable to save those many years ago. Omi fights to protect the innocence that was stolen from him. And Ken.Ken fought for the children he loved so much. But today he killed what he swore to protect and it is tearing him apart.  
  
I should walk away. I should let him discover for himself how it feels to be a murderer, but I can't. I know what it is to live in the darkness, and I know that it is not where Ken belongs. He is different.He is light where I am dark. He is passion to my ice. He is everything that I am not and while it hurts to look at him I know it would hurt more to watch him surrender to the darkness.  
  
Don't misunderstand me I don't see myself as a savior, far from it. I am the first to admit that my motives are not totally innocent. I have my own selfish reasons. Ken is important to me, as are the others.  
  
Omi is my inspiration. His intelligence and good nature motivates me to perform beyond my normal limits.  
  
Yohji is my determination. His love of life, women, and humor gives me the strength to do what must be done.  
  
Both support me and motivate me but Ken. Ken is my hope. His passionate, short tempered, stubborn, soccer player ways remind me of life before I embraced the darkness. He is the reason I can continue with this life I have chosen, and without him there would be only the darkness. And after all even a creature of the night such as myself lives with the hope of the coming dawn. 


End file.
